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How to Drink a Tree's Blood · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey,
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: I'm welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: and Jerry's here too, and we're talking today about maple syrup.
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: And I'm not going to lie to you, dear listeners.
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: I want something maple like right now.
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: I need too. This was I don't know if this
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: came from a listener or it came from many listeners
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: or just my own brain, but we not even thinking.
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: I just throw this one to Livia. Uh kind of
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: forgetting that I don't want to give I don't want
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: to doc's Olivia, but let's just say she lives in
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: the New England area.
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: Uh huh sure.
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: So she was like, oh yeah, baby, right up my alley,
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: let's do it.
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I have the impression that she'll eat a thing
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: of maple cotton knee to hand it to her.
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I could feel the joy coming through Libya's keyboard
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: in this one, which is always nice for sure.
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: And the timing's amazing too, because the showing season is
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: basically just wrapped up as far as I can tell.
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: And I think it was a good one.
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Olivia also just as a little thing. Remember we've
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: said that she always has great titles, and this one
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: was how to Drink a Tree's Blood.
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's gonna be the title.
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: Oh good, Okay, good.
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: I mean I might put in parentheses maple syrup, you
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: Sicico or something like that.
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: Sure. I like that. Anytime Siico ends up in a title,
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: I think something great has.
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: Happened, including the movie Sicico.
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: So is there a movie called Sicico? Yeah?
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: Wasn't that didn't wasn't that one a Harmony Korean's movie
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: or Krine? I don't know, I think so. No, No,
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: that was Michael Moore, Sorry, Michael. Oh yeah, yeah, the
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: documentary one, Yeah.
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, about the American healthcare system and how broken
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: it is. Yeah, so chuck, all right, so let's talk
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: about maple syrup. We both want some maple syrup. This
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: is fair warning to anyone listening. You're gonna want some maple,
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: and that's okay. It's okay to want something maple, even
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: if you don't have.
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: It, that's right. But if we're gonna start with maple syrup,
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: we got to start with the maple tree. There are
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: all kinds of maple trees. But if you and and
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: you can get sugary sap from other kinds of maple trees,
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: but if you want the real gold, and if you
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: want the real gold standard industry wide, you're gonna tap
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: into that sweet, sweet sugar maple, the Acer sacarum, because
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: that's the one that has the real good stuff, that
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: has the highest concentration of sugar in its sap. And uh,
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: like you said, you might tap a red maple if
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: that's all you got around, but you need a lot
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: more of it to end up with what you want.
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: So you really want, you really want that sugar maple.
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: Right, And if you say, okay, guys, I'm all fine
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: to sugar maple, where do I go? They're all over
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: the place. Actually, they have a pretty great range. We're
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: talking about North America, Northern North America, which includes the
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: northeastern US, southeastern Canada. We're talking New Brunswick, We're talking
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: Nova Scotia. Yeah, don't leave out Quebec, because Southern Quebec
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: is the far and away the largest producer of maple
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: syrup in the world. Parts of Ontario and then Maine,
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: all the way down in North Carolina you can find
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: sugar maples. There are some places that sugar maples grow
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: that they're not going to they're not going to make
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: maple syrup as much there because there's also an addition
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: to the actual tree itself. There are environmental conditions, climate
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: conditions that have to take place, and they're so variable
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: that maple syrup production and maple sugar production has resisted
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: industrialization throughout its lifetime. And that just makes me cheer.
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah, because it's like you have to tap a tree
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: that grows in the woods to do that, and I
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: bet they've tried, but they haven't figured out a way
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: to build a factory around a forest with trees going.
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: Through it, right, Yeah, as far as I know, no
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: one's tried that. Well, I guess the biodome kind.
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: Of punts, Yeah, probably so. But what we're about to describe,
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: everybody is one of the wonders of nature. I didn't
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: know anything about this stuff, so it was all new
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: to me, and I was kind of blown away. It
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: was kind of a mind bomb, if you will, for me.
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: The magic to the maple syrup, obviously is that sap,
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: and that sap has a very specific function in a tree.
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  Speaker 2: The sapwood is a part of the tree. It's also
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: called the xylum. It's in that tree trunk just outside
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  Speaker 2: of the heartwood, and it has tissue in that sapwood
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  Speaker 2: in the xylum that moves water and minerals around from
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: the roots to the leaves. It's kind of like the
• 4:35
  Speaker 2: freeway system, if you will.
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah, or it's circulatory system hormones too. That's what sap is.
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: It's minerals, water, hormones, all the stuff that the tree
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: is moving to itself to help repare wounds and to
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: produce photosynthesis, and then also move the products from photosynthesis,
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: which is like starches back down to the roots. Right,
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: So you've got stuff moving up and down the tree trunk.
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: But if you you walk up to sugar maple in
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: the summer and you put a tap into it, it's
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: going to just be like this, that was useless and
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: it kind of hurt. There's a specific time when you
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: want to tap a sugar maple to get the constituent
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: maple SAP.
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: That's right, and that is in the major producing parts,
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: which is what we described before. That will be generally
• 5:25
  Speaker 2: between like February and April, with a peak in March.
• 5:30
  Speaker 2: And that is because and this is the second sort
• 5:32
  Speaker 2: of astounding part of this stuff, that xylum that sap
• 5:35
  Speaker 2: would it's moving stuff all around, but it's also really
• 5:38
  Speaker 2: good at holding energy reserves during times where it needs it.
• 5:42
  Speaker 2: So they are the cells called ray parinama that use
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: enzymes that turn those starches Josh was talking about into
• 5:49
  Speaker 2: sugars and it's a great way to store that energy.
• 5:52
  Speaker 2: But that sugar also protects the tissue from freezing during
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: the winter, So it's just sort of sitting there like
• 5:58
  Speaker 2: in the perfect conditions to be tapped in those months.
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, because there's this kind of positive pressure that builds
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: up in the tree because on nights where it's freezing
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: and that turn into days that get above freezing. Right,
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: So when the icicles start to really drip, I've seen
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: the sap itself starts moving up and down. And when
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: it moves up, normally, when there's leaves on the tree,
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: transpiration or basically evaporation at the leaf surface that relieves
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: that pressure. But remember this is a time when the
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: sugar maples don't have leaves yet, so it can't kind
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: of relieve that pressure, and the pressure builds up and
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: builds up, and so if you go to a sugar
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  Speaker 1: maple at specifically the right time, when it's freezing at night,
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: not freezing in the day, and you put a tap
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: into it, that's when the SAP's going to come out.
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: And like you said, those starches have been converted to
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: sugars as energy stores, so that's also when the sap
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: is going to be at its sweetest. There is a
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: couple of weeks that you can tap a specific kind
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: of tree in a specific location under specific climate conditions.
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: To get the sap. You're gonna need to make maple syrup.
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: And I mean, I just love maple syrup so much
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: more than I did before.
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure, it's you know, once once those conditions
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: leave that step, it didn't dry up, but it stops
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: running freely. If you could get to it, it wouldn't taste
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: the same, like you said, it would be kind of bitter,
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: but you can't get to it anyway. And this is
• 7:30
  Speaker 2: like a seasonal cycle, Like this is when the trees
• 7:32
  Speaker 2: are beginning to bud again, you know, like we said,
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: at peaks and march basically. And if you let's say
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: you tapped a tree and you got a little bit
• 7:42
  Speaker 2: of that good stuff and you put it on your tongue,
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: it wouldn't taste like the final result. It's sweet. You
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: can taste the sweetness, but it's about you know, the
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: SAP ranges from about one to three percent of that
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  Speaker 2: sweetness at that point, so like it needs to be
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: processed after that point because what you really want to
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: get it too is a sugar concentration about sixty six percent, Yeah,
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  Speaker 2: which means you have to boil it. You have to
• 8:06
  Speaker 2: boil down about forty gallons to get one gallon of syrup.
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah, there's actually there was this maple syrup researcher from
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: the turn of the last century named C. W. Jones,
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: and he came up with what's called the Jones rule
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  Speaker 1: of eighty six. And I'm not sure how it works.
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  Speaker 1: It seems a little magical, but you can take the
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  Speaker 1: percentage of sugar that's found in the sap naturally that
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: you just got out of the tree, and multiply that
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  Speaker 1: percentage by eighty six and it will tell you how
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  Speaker 1: many gallons you need to boil down to get one
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  Speaker 1: gallon of maple syrup at sixty six percent sugar concentration.
• 8:39
  Speaker 2: That's right, And usually it's about that forty gallon range. Yeah,
• 8:44
  Speaker 2: people have you know, we're not the first persons to
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  Speaker 2: enjoy this. Stuff like has a very long history among
• 8:51
  Speaker 2: indigenous North American groups and they used it for all
• 8:55
  Speaker 2: kinds of stuff. There's a lot of different stories like
• 8:57
  Speaker 2: like you know, who's the first person to eat oyster?
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  Speaker 2: Like how do they figure out this tree sap was
• 9:01
  Speaker 2: something you wanted, like the first person to tap it?
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  Speaker 2: And it probably no one knows for sure. It probably
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: happened by accident. There's a lot of stories. One of
• 9:09
  Speaker 2: them is that there was a tomahawk in a tree.
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  Speaker 2: That tomahawk got pulled out and there just happened to
• 9:16
  Speaker 2: be a container below it that caught that sap and
• 9:21
  Speaker 2: some indigenous person was like, oh well, let me take
• 9:23
  Speaker 2: that water that's in this bucket from the rain and
• 9:26
  Speaker 2: boil some meat for dinner. And they're like wait a minute,
• 9:29
  Speaker 2: this is like, you know, has a sweet taste to it.
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  Speaker 2: So it was a complete accident. It's kind of a
• 9:36
  Speaker 2: nice story. My money's probably on just another kind of accident.
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: Maybe someone just sort of tasted it with their finger
• 9:42
  Speaker 2: because a woodpecker pecked a hole in a tree and
• 9:45
  Speaker 2: they're like, hey, may maybe we can use this something
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: because they had long use SAPs and gums for other things,
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: so it wasn't like any big like revelation that something
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: from a tree was useful.
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: Sure, yeah, totally. That's a good point. Another suggests is
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: that somebody noticed a sapsicle and try that, because the
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: sugar content of the sap itself has a lower freezing
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: point than the water, so the water separates out as
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: it freezes, and then the sap, the sugary sap eventually
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: freezes more with a higher concentration of sugar. And if
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: somebody broke that off and licked it, they'd be like,
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: wait to get to the bottom of what's going on here,
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: because this is de lish.
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: I would love a real sapsicle. That'd be fun.
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: We should also say this, so the the Europeans who
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: came over to colonize North America got this, like learned
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: about maple syrup directly from the indigenous people who were here,
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: like the Abenaki, the how to know Sni, the Ojibwa,
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: the Algonquin. All of them had methods and techniques for
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: getting maple sap out of sugar maple trees, and they
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: had like their own techniques. Each group had a slightly
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: different technique, but ultimately what it usually boiled down to
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: was cutting a laceration in the bark of the tree,
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: possibly putting like a hollow twig in there to serve
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: as the tap. Sometimes they just let it trickle down
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: the bark of the tree, and then they would usually
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: catch it in like a little birch bark container. The
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: ones that I saw look like little tiny rowboats, which
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: I bet you could use as rowboats after the sugaring season.
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: That's right after they got that sap you know, like
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: I said, it was still you still have to process
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: it and boil it down. There were different techniques that
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: they used, you know, depending what tribe you were from,
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: but one of them most certainly was probably putting heated
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: rocks into a container and kind of boiling and evaporating
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: out the water that way a lot slower process actually. Yeah.
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: In fact, sometimes they would just put it over hot
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: fire and let it happen. Sometimes they would just leave
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: it out in the sun and take like the real
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: slow roll approach to get the water out of there.
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Also they from that I guess, the sapsicle kind
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: of thing, they figured out that you could also freeze
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: it out like you could freeze the water out, remove
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: the ice, and you've just basically evaporated a bunch of
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: water from the sap. So there was probably different techniques
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: that could also be combined to just to get it
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: more and more closer to what you wanted. And we
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: should say that the indigenous peoples of North America who
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: were doing this pre contact, they were not making syrup
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: nearly as much from what we understand. They were making
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: this into sugar, sugar cakes, granulated sugar. They were making
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: sugar out of the maple sap, which is essentially the
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: same thing. You're boiling it down further than you would syrup,
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: but you let it dry. Once it gets to a
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: thickened state, you let it dry it. Then you break
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: it up and you've got maple sugar on your hands.
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: Specifically, for one drive, it was sort of a seasonal
• 12:54
  Speaker 2: shift for the Ogway people. Like in the wintertime they
• 12:59
  Speaker 2: would break up into smaller groups of like a dozen
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: or so and travel around and hunt and ice fish
• 13:04
  Speaker 2: and stuff like that, and in the spring they would
• 13:06
  Speaker 2: come back together and form like these bigger communities. And
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: that sugaring process and tapping those trees was kind of
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: the first big thing that they did so they could
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: you know, store it as long as possible, hopefully all
• 13:17
  Speaker 2: year long, and then you know, did their other spring
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: and summer stuff like you know, plant and harvest and
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: stuff like that. But sugaring season kind of kicked off
• 13:27
  Speaker 2: of the coming back together, which is kind of cool.
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: That's another thing I love about it is that's what
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: it's called. When you go and you collect the sap
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: to make maple syrup or maple sugar from, it's called
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: the sugaring season. The place where you boil down the
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: SAPs called the sugar shack.
• 13:44
  Speaker 2: The sugar bush.
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the stand of trees of sugar maples together is
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: called the sugar bush. Kind of like a wooded area.
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: Another name for that. Not the evergreen scrub bush that's
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: found out in chaparral country. This is just a group
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: of sugar maples together in an area. That's your sugar bush.
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: I just love this whole thing.
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah. When they would pass pass it back and forth,
• 14:09
  Speaker 2: they would say, give me some sugar, baby. That's really
• 14:14
  Speaker 2: I love it that. The word sugar is a very
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: pleasing sound to my ear.
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: So sure, especially and also when you think of the snow.
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: I think of the snow and like the maples in
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: the snow like visually, and then thinking of the word
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: sugar with all that stuff too. Just gosh, that almost
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: makes me want to go do like basically move and
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: buy like a little parcel of land that has some
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: sugar maples on it and just make like a gallon
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: once a year or something like that. Seems like a
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: lot to do just for a gallon of maple syrup
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: that I could probably buy from somebody else for much much,
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: much cheaper and less effort. But it just seems nice,
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: you know, like a pleasant way to be.
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: Oh, people do that, I mean, I know in this
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: article Livia said that like doing it in your house
• 14:58
  Speaker 2: isn't super recommended because all the steam creates from boiling
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: it down. But I've seen videos like there are definitely
• 15:03
  Speaker 2: people that tap trees on their land and just get
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: small amounts of sugar and like, you know, kind of
• 15:10
  Speaker 2: like somebody might get honey from bees and set a
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: little stand on the side of the road.
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. I was looking at like a map
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: or sugaring I guess supply house and they had like
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: three four hundred dollars evaporation pans that you basically put
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: on like a propane gas like heater or burner, And yeah,
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: you could, you could do it wherever. But yes, I
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: think I would build a little sugaring shack or sugar
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: shack just a yeah, just a wood burn into a
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: sign to hang over the door that said sugar shack.
• 15:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And if some paote happened to find its way
• 15:44
  Speaker 2: in there, so be it. So we should mention before
• 15:49
  Speaker 2: we take our break. You know, they were obviously eating
• 15:51
  Speaker 2: this stuff in a lot of ways, the indigenous peoples.
• 15:54
  Speaker 2: They were making corn meal based breads with it. They
• 15:57
  Speaker 2: would put it on all kinds of like meats and fish,
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: and I imagine it tasted just so great. So it
• 16:03
  Speaker 2: was the flavor for them, but it was also a
• 16:05
  Speaker 2: very calorie rich thing in the early spring when their
• 16:08
  Speaker 2: winter food was sort of dwindling, right, and so you know,
• 16:11
  Speaker 2: and as we'll see later, their health properties too, So
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: they probably had a hunch about that as well.
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: And don't forget the tiny rowboats that you could put
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: in like a laker a pond. After sure, that's right, Yeah,
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: let's take that break, all.
• 16:24
  Speaker 2: Right, We'll be right back and talk more about maple
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: right after.
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: This, So Chuck I said that European colonizers got there
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: just total awareness of maple sugaring or syruping from the
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: local indigenous people. One of the things that the local
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: indigenous peoples got from the Europeans were metal pots, which
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: vastly improved the process of making maple syrup and make
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: maple sugar for the indigenous tribes. Like that, no longer
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: did youift to put a heated rock in some sort
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: of bowl with some sap and just weight Like this
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: just increased things tremendously.
• 17:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I wonder if they collected in that or if
• 17:33
  Speaker 2: they stuck to their baby boats.
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: I hope, I hope baby boats. That's my that's my wish.
• 17:40
  Speaker 2: I think so too. So early on in that colonization process,
• 17:46
  Speaker 2: you know, the settlers, obviously we're doing the same thing,
• 17:49
  Speaker 2: collecting it and using their methods. It was cheaper than
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: importing cane sugar from the Caribbean, Yeah, which is where
• 17:55
  Speaker 2: that was all coming from. And it became like the
• 17:58
  Speaker 2: de facto sweetener of the United States at some point,
• 18:01
  Speaker 2: and then later became a sort of a cause, an
• 18:04
  Speaker 2: abolitionist cause. I think in the eighteenth century, abolitionists and
• 18:08
  Speaker 2: Quakers were using like maple like as a way to say, hey,
• 18:14
  Speaker 2: let's not especially founding father Benjamin Rush, like, hey, let's
• 18:17
  Speaker 2: not support these British slave based plantations in the Caribbean
• 18:22
  Speaker 2: that we're getting this cane sugar, Like, we can get
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: our own sweet stuff right here and export it and
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: not promote slavery, and it tastes great.
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but in that export, if you made enough to export,
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: you could also undercut the sugar market in Great Britain
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: back home, so you were really kind of hobbling the
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: slave slave based plantation societies by doing that. Thomas Jefferson
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: was like, I'm on board, let's do this, because it
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: fit into his vision of the United States being a
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: collective of Yaouman farmers who are basically, you know, growing
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: enough for themselves in a little as sell Like, yeah,
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: just plant some sugar maples too, and it'll be great.
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: Because one of the things that makes sugaring attractive is
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: that it takes place in this weird in between time
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: when there's normally not a lot to do on a
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: family farm. Now you have a whole other revenue stream
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: and you're getting a bunch of maple syrup out of
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: it too, just by sugaring adding that to like your
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: yearly thing.
• 19:23
  Speaker 2: So we did mention earlier that you know, they probably
• 19:26
  Speaker 2: tried to turn this into a large scale thing, but
• 19:29
  Speaker 2: it just failed kind of time after time because it's
• 19:32
  Speaker 2: such a labor intensive thing. And you know, but as
• 19:37
  Speaker 2: a result, you know, maple you know, I think I
• 19:39
  Speaker 2: said at one point it was like the most common
• 19:41
  Speaker 2: sweetener in the US. That kind of started falling away
• 19:43
  Speaker 2: because it's so labor intensive. And by the second half
• 19:47
  Speaker 2: of the nineteenth century, cane sugar prices fell a lot,
• 19:50
  Speaker 2: and then beat sugar started being produced. So maple sugar,
• 19:54
  Speaker 2: it just, you know, as far as being a sweetener,
• 19:56
  Speaker 2: kind of fell by the wayside for a long time. Yeah,
• 20:00
  Speaker 2: but they started, you know, people still like that flavor,
• 20:04
  Speaker 2: especially on things like pancakes and waffles, so they needed
• 20:08
  Speaker 2: to unfortunately kind of cut it with other stuff. So
• 20:11
  Speaker 2: they maple producers started cutting it with that cane sugar
• 20:15
  Speaker 2: I mentioned in corn syrup, and that's where we get
• 20:17
  Speaker 2: you know, missus Butterworth. That's where we get that pancake
• 20:20
  Speaker 2: syrup that we have today.
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: I have Missus Butterworth written right there.
• 20:24
  Speaker 2: I mean what else is there aunt Jemima? Those are
• 20:27
  Speaker 2: the only two. And I don't think it's called Auntjemima anymore,
• 20:29
  Speaker 2: is it? Or is it?
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: No? No, it's I can't remember what they call, like
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: Old Mill or something like that.
• 20:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, they changed the name. Here's my secret. Like,
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: if I go to the restaurant and they have the
• 20:39
  Speaker 2: maple syrup at the nice brunch, I love it. I'm
• 20:41
  Speaker 2: not going to turn my nose up and I know
• 20:43
  Speaker 2: that's the gold, but man, I love that that buttery
• 20:47
  Speaker 2: pancake syrup.
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, me too. So I was thinking about what
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: I was raised on. I didn't have real maple syrup
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: until I was I don't know, probably in my forties,
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: to tell you the truth, I finally was like the same,
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: I want to see what this is like and ordered
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: some and it. I mean, it's pretty good, but it
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: is a different animal from what I grew up on,
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: which wasn't even missus Butterworth's. My mom was like, no,
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: that's too expensive. She would make a one to one
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: simple syrup and then put a little bit of artificial
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: maple flavoring in it, and that was that is maple
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: syrup to me, and I love it still like, that's
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: still my favorite kind of syrup.
• 21:25
  Speaker 2: Now, when you say you ordered it, what does that
• 21:26
  Speaker 2: mean ordered it off the shelf at the grocery store.
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: No, I ordered some online first, I think, before I
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: noticed that you could get it at grocery store. Wow, okay, yeah,
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: because I'm like, organic, real maple syrup. Where are you
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: gonna find that? And yeah, apparently just about everywhere.
• 21:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean we have that stuff around. And here's
• 21:44
  Speaker 2: what I didn't know either, is that U and I
• 21:47
  Speaker 2: know Canadians and Northeastern people in the of the United
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: States are probably like, you guys are such rude.
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: Oh they're a gas right now.
• 21:54
  Speaker 2: But hey, I grew up in Georgia, like this is
• 21:56
  Speaker 2: just wasn't a thing. It's not a thing down here
• 21:58
  Speaker 2: like it is up there. So I didn't know you
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: had to refrigerate it. So I went through the stage
• 22:05
  Speaker 2: of like, you know, why do I have mold spores
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: on my maple syrup and Missus Butterworth is just fine
• 22:12
  Speaker 2: sitting right next to it on the shelf.
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I'm a little nervous about the syrup I got
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: because it's been in my pantry for a long time
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: and it still doesn't have mold, so it's got like
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: anti freeze or something cut into it.
• 22:23
  Speaker 2: Is this stuff you ordered in your forties? Yeah, you
• 22:26
  Speaker 2: haven't gone through one bottle.
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: No, I haven't, because it is it's so different from
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: what I like, or what I'm used to is maple syrup,
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: that it's like a special kind of thing. It's not
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: what I go for now anytime I'm like syrup, like,
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: it's a very occasional thing for me.
• 22:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm with you, man. I definitely came on to
• 22:47
  Speaker 2: it late, and it was definitely like in a restaurant
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: somewhere where they, you know, had a little cup on
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: the table next to me. I was like, Oh, this
• 22:55
  Speaker 2: is really.
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: Good in a cup, like a little Sellow cup.
• 22:58
  Speaker 2: No, no, no, no, like the little little logoramic. You know,
• 23:01
  Speaker 2: I gotcha, I gotcha beside the waffle.
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: So what's interesting You kind of said that that maple
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: syrup production is kind of slowly but surely kind of
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: bounced back and forth, but never really kind of gotten huge.
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: I think we've made that point very clearly by now.
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: But in the late twentieth century, especially, like I think
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: around the seventies, it did kind of get a boost
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: because people are like, you know what, we can use
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: those vacuum pumps that we used to pump milk on
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: our family farm and plastic tubing that we'll just connect
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: to the taps and we can make this a lot
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: easier on ourselves. Because if you are a traditional sugaring operation,
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: you have pails hanging from your taps, that's in a tree,
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: and every day you have to go collect the pails
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: and immediately start boiling it so that it doesn't grow bacteria.
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: This is like you just kick back and let it
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: all come to you, and it's probably going into a
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: pretty decent size advance machine that's handling all of the
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: processing for you as well.
• 24:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure, the advent of the reverse osmosis machine
• 24:08
  Speaker 2: became a really big deal because that was just a
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: way more efficient way to remove water from the sap
• 24:14
  Speaker 2: before you boil it down. So I think they can
• 24:16
  Speaker 2: get about ninety percent of the water out with the
• 24:19
  Speaker 2: reverse osmosis machine, So that really drastically reduces the boiling
• 24:22
  Speaker 2: time to get down to that really sugary good stuff. Right.
• 24:26
  Speaker 2: And the other thing is, you know, back in the day,
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: they had to use you know, wood fired boilers and stuff,
• 24:32
  Speaker 2: like that. Now they use propane. So lots of little
• 24:35
  Speaker 2: things kind of came along to make it more industrial,
• 24:38
  Speaker 2: but still not you know, it's still trees in a
• 24:40
  Speaker 2: forest that you're tapping. It's not like some big like
• 24:44
  Speaker 2: I said, like a factory built around it or something.
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: I was reading a lot of stuff explaining how this
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: whole thing works, and one of the sites that has
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: some good explainers is greens Sugar House. And they still
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: use wood.
• 24:56
  Speaker 2: Oh really, they.
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: Said, they're one of the few who uses wood still.
• 25:00
  Speaker 2: I wonder if there's a benefit to that or just
• 25:03
  Speaker 2: they like to be old school and tout that.
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: I think maybe old school. I don't know. Yeah, So
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: all of this put together, reverse osmosis, vacuum pumps, plastic tubing,
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: when you combine it. By the mid nineties, I think
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: maple syrup production in the US and Canada together increased
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: four hundred percent over just like a couple decades earlier.
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: So still not industrialized, but enough now that like you
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: can start to supply the world with maple syrup. And
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: that's that's definitely what's happening.
• 25:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. You know, climate changes put a dent
• 25:38
  Speaker 2: in almost everything, and maple the maple industry is no
• 25:42
  Speaker 2: stranger to that, especially in the US. But snow cover
• 25:46
  Speaker 2: is a pretty big deal. So it's not snowing as much,
• 25:49
  Speaker 2: and snow cover helps insulate those roots, so that's no
• 25:52
  Speaker 2: great not a great thing. The trees are also more
• 25:56
  Speaker 2: affected by disease and invasive species that come with warmer temperature,
• 26:00
  Speaker 2: and all of this has resulted in I don't know
• 26:03
  Speaker 2: about a consensus, but a lot of scientists are saying that,
• 26:05
  Speaker 2: like this may be a Canada only thing in the
• 26:09
  Speaker 2: not too distant future, Like that range is reducing, and
• 26:11
  Speaker 2: it's reducing northward.
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: Right, remember our plant migration episode? Like that, Yeah, for sure,
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: so you said that there the range of sugar maples
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: is moving northward aka plant migration. There are other things
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: that have happened over the years with the sugar bushes.
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: Remember stands of sugar maples that we figured out, like
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: that's not good, we should try something different. And these
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: family farmers basically just did something logical, and we're like, well,
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: let's just tear down some of these other trees and
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: plant more sugar maples. And so the sugar bush turned
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: into a very almost a monoculture basically where it was
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: nothing but sugar maples, and that makes sense economically on
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: the short term, but in the long term it's not
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: good because it reduces biodiversity.
• 27:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah for sure. And we should mention there is another
• 27:04
  Speaker 2: plant called a sugar bush, but we're not talking about that,
• 27:07
  Speaker 2: just so save your emails.
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: I did. I was talking it's a chaparral plant. It's
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: a scrub bush.
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, who wants that?
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: I guess people who like the chaparral. People who live
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: in like twenty nine palms.
• 27:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah, okay. So you know, biodiversity is an important part
• 27:23
  Speaker 2: of any thriving ecosystem, and sugar maples are no different.
• 27:28
  Speaker 2: Once you simplify that tree species, you know it's gonna
• 27:32
  Speaker 2: drive out certain kinds of birds, and those kinds of
• 27:34
  Speaker 2: birds might be feeding on the invasive little insect critters,
• 27:39
  Speaker 2: so they need to protect that biodiversity. So places are
• 27:42
  Speaker 2: now sort of realizing we need to not just cut
• 27:45
  Speaker 2: down swas of other things to plant sugar maples, and
• 27:47
  Speaker 2: Vermont is one of them, and they enacted an effort
• 27:50
  Speaker 2: that now requires twenty five percent of trees and a
• 27:52
  Speaker 2: sugar bush to be other species other than that sugar maple.
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: Right. Yeah, So That was nice to come full circle
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: like that and realize like, yeah, you don't want to
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: do that. There's reasons to keep things biodiverse. I love
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: it when nature's like, no, that's not going to work.
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: Let's go back to how I had it before.
• 28:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure, if you're wondering about the trees themselves,
• 28:16
  Speaker 2: they have to be about forty years old, so even
• 28:17
  Speaker 2: when they were planning these things, it takes decades and
• 28:19
  Speaker 2: decades to be able to tap them, and they have
• 28:23
  Speaker 2: to be a certain size. They can only be about
• 28:24
  Speaker 2: ten inches in diameter and are generally only tapped once
• 28:28
  Speaker 2: unless they're big mamas. If they're over eighteen inches, you
• 28:31
  Speaker 2: might be able to tap that thing a second time.
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, which kind of raised the question for me. Not
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: beg the question, it just raised it like can you
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: hurt like does it hurt the tree when you're removing
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: sap because it seems kind of sensible, like it's not
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: like it naturally exudes the sap, So if you're coming
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: along as a person and removing it, like is the
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: tree like hey I need that, and it seems to
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: be not the case.
• 28:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's good. I think I had that same question
• 29:02
  Speaker 2: years ago. About coal seams if I'm not Oh yeah, yeah,
• 29:08
  Speaker 2: I think I asked that on the show. I was like,
• 29:10
  Speaker 2: I always wondered if like just removing all of this
• 29:12
  Speaker 2: stuff from the Earth's core is like not a great thing.
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: I could see that you leave in holes and destabilizing it,
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: It's going to turn into Swiss cheese eventually.
• 29:21
  Speaker 2: You know what, you might have said that fifteen years ago.
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: I probably did Swiss cheese. But with as far as
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: the sap goes, removing it and harming the sugar maple.
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: That doctor Jones from University of Vermont who came up
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: with the Jones rule of eighty six, he did a
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: study and estimated that something like four to nine percent
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: of an eight to ten inch diameter trees total carbohydrate
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: reserves are removed during a sugaring season, and that people
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: don't tap trees that small, like you said, ten inches
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: in diameter minimum. So the bigger trees probably have even
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: more reserves and lose less of a person. And so no,
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: over a sugaring season, you're probably not going to tap
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: enough sap to actually harm the tree in any way.
• 30:07
  Speaker 2: That's great, but you did make one mistake. I believe
• 30:10
  Speaker 2: it's pronounced doctor Jones.
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, it definitely stood out to me too. But
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: I uh, what's weird is I thought of Sean Connery
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: and not Harrison Ford. Oh something's wrong with me. Oh man,
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: that's a sign of something or other. I'm sure there's
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: like a psychiatric test that gives you that, Like a
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: picture of Sean Conry picture of Harrison Ford says which
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: one's doctor Jones, and you better pick Harrison Ford or
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: else they're going to institutionalize you.
• 30:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Or I mean if you would have said Shila both,
• 30:41
  Speaker 2: I would just just walk into traffic after that.
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: They don't even want to diagnose that one.
• 30:48
  Speaker 2: No. Uh So we should talk a little bit about
• 30:50
  Speaker 2: how this stuff is processed. You know, if, like we
• 30:53
  Speaker 2: mentioned sort of the home processors, or if you're just
• 30:55
  Speaker 2: a small scale producer, you're probably probably have that sugar
• 31:00
  Speaker 2: house on your property. If you have a larger operation,
• 31:03
  Speaker 2: you're probably collecting from nearby but taking it to a
• 31:06
  Speaker 2: central boil boiler location like a larger sugar house obviously,
• 31:12
  Speaker 2: and then inside that sugar house. You know, evaporation is
• 31:15
  Speaker 2: a big part of it. You know, we talked about
• 31:16
  Speaker 2: indigenous people evaporating out all that water. You still need
• 31:20
  Speaker 2: to do the same thing on a small scale. I
• 31:23
  Speaker 2: know you mentioned like the the propane heater, like the
• 31:27
  Speaker 2: turkey fryer kind of thing that you repurposed, or a
• 31:29
  Speaker 2: wood fryer. But when you get larger, you know, it's
• 31:32
  Speaker 2: gonna be larger machines and they're you know, they're gonna
• 31:35
  Speaker 2: be a little they're gonna have more bells and whistles
• 31:37
  Speaker 2: on them.
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you repurposed the turkey frier because you didn't read
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: online that you're not supposed to drop a frozen turkey
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: in a deep fryar because you almost caught your house
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: on fire. So your partner said, no, you need to
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: get that out into a sugar shack and make some
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: syrup with it instead.
• 31:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and by god, please do not fry your turkey
• 31:56
  Speaker 2: indoors either at all.
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: Oh, good Lord, who does that?
• 32:00
  Speaker 2: A video of a guy doing it, it's not good.
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: Was he running it off a generator that he had
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: indoors as well? No?
• 32:06
  Speaker 2: No, I mean it was a standard propane situation, but
• 32:09
  Speaker 2: he did it like in his kitchen.
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 32:11
  Speaker 2: I mean, you can find a video of anybody doing
• 32:13
  Speaker 2: anything dumb these days.
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: One other thing we're not going to talk about him,
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: but I urge you if you're like I kind of
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: like this, this sounds neat. Look up evaporator pants. They're
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: really cool, very cool. So something that I had no
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: idea that's actually kind of the fact of the podcast
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: possibly the flavor of maple syrup. The maple flavor itself.
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: It's not really present very much in the SAP from
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: what I understand, it's actually a result of the Mayard reaction.
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: The same thing that turns bread into toast. Yeah, makes
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: some duck delicious all it does all sorts of amazing things,
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: and it's part of the I think the caramelization process.
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: It gives that that SAP. It's maple flavor.
• 32:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we have a pretty good detailed description of that
• 33:01
  Speaker 2: in our Toast episode, which I think was quite good.
• 33:03
  Speaker 2: So go check that one out.
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: It was.
• 33:05
  Speaker 2: And by the way, we want to mention there's a
• 33:07
  Speaker 2: new thing on Apple podcast where, oh yeah, if you
• 33:11
  Speaker 2: mentioned something from like a past episode that I think
• 33:14
  Speaker 2: something will now pop up on your podcast player that
• 33:17
  Speaker 2: like tells you where that episode is, which is kind
• 33:19
  Speaker 2: of cool.
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it has a link that you can click. Yeah,
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: like Apple has done some just amazing stuff for their
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: podcast app and player now and it's like, yeah, I mean,
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: hats off to them for the design and thought that
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: they put into it. So yeah, I say go check
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: it out because we I think we have a whole
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: channel there now.
• 33:40
  Speaker 2: So back to the process. Though, after you have that
• 33:44
  Speaker 2: boiling going on and get rid of that water, you're
• 33:47
  Speaker 2: evaporating the water, you still are going to have to
• 33:50
  Speaker 2: filter that stuff out because something's in there called sugar sand.
• 33:54
  Speaker 2: It's like, you know, concentrated minerals and stuff, and it
• 33:56
  Speaker 2: might you know, make it look cloudy. And this is
• 33:59
  Speaker 2: stuff that you want to either sell on the side
• 34:01
  Speaker 2: of the road or sell in the store, and so
• 34:03
  Speaker 2: you're going to filter it from there. And to me,
• 34:06
  Speaker 2: this next thing was the fact of the podcast. If
• 34:09
  Speaker 2: you're if you're a fan of wine, you know that
• 34:11
  Speaker 2: tear war is a thing where a grape growing from
• 34:14
  Speaker 2: a certain vine out of certain soil in a certain
• 34:17
  Speaker 2: place on Earth, under certain climate conditions will taste different
• 34:20
  Speaker 2: than that same grape grown elsewhere. And that's the same
• 34:23
  Speaker 2: thing with maple trees. It has a tear war and
• 34:27
  Speaker 2: if you are a highly sort of specialized maple syrup producer,
• 34:34
  Speaker 2: or a sugarer. I guess sugar daddy.
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah, sugar edady.
• 34:39
  Speaker 2: You can be like well known for your particular tear
• 34:42
  Speaker 2: war and you can charge like a lot more money.
• 34:45
  Speaker 2: I don't know by a lot more money, but you
• 34:46
  Speaker 2: can have like an elevated price because you have such
• 34:48
  Speaker 2: a specialized tear war to your tree and syrup.
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: Right, you're like my sugar maples are fertilized only with
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: pig feces coming from pigs that are fed on a
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: diet of organic truffles.
• 35:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Maybe, so you.
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: Could get a lot of money for that syrup, is
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: what I understand.
• 35:05
  Speaker 2: I think so.
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: So. Canada is far and away the largest exporter of
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: maple syrup. They essentially supply the world with syrup. Yeah,
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: I think they produce about Back in twenty twenty three,
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: O Livia found four hundred and fifty seven million dollars
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: worth of maple syrup Canada produced and sold. The US
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: follows at thirty five million. That eus about thirteen million.
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: But Canada makes so much maple syrup that the US,
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: which produces a ton of maple syrup, still imports more
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: than it exports or sells from Canada.
• 35:40
  Speaker 2: That's right, and that's just another reason that we need
• 35:43
  Speaker 2: to stay good friends with Canada.
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, because they got the syrup.
• 35:46
  Speaker 2: That's right, And we're going to be expressing that sentiment
• 35:48
  Speaker 2: on our summer tour all across Canada. The good will
• 35:51
  Speaker 2: will be flowing hopefully tapped, just like the maple syrup.
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's the Dove and the Olive branch.
• 35:57
  Speaker 2: Tour Quebec alone. We need to shout them out. I
• 36:00
  Speaker 2: know you mentioned they were the biggest producer. They produce
• 36:02
  Speaker 2: about seventy percent I'm sorry, seventy two percent of the
• 36:06
  Speaker 2: world supply of maple syrup, fifty five million taps going
• 36:10
  Speaker 2: in Quebec alone, and they have what some people call
• 36:14
  Speaker 2: a cartel. In Canada. There's a government sort of endorse
• 36:18
  Speaker 2: industry group called the Quebec Maple Syrup Producers or shortened
• 36:22
  Speaker 2: with their French name, the PPAQ that basically acts as
• 36:26
  Speaker 2: the go between between the eight thousand producers and the customers.
• 36:30
  Speaker 2: And like they're really in the business. It's not just like, yeah,
• 36:34
  Speaker 2: we want to make sure everything's going okaya. They like
• 36:36
  Speaker 2: they tell you how to market it, how to sell it,
• 36:41
  Speaker 2: what to do with the reserves. Like they're really, really involved.
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they're like the Opec of maple syrup. Essentially, they
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: have a strategic reserve that they started in two thousand
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: that can hold up the ten million gallons. I saw
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: them also described as a mafia by an independent syrup producer,
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: because if you produce maple syrup in Quebec, it does
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: not matter if you're a member of the PPAQ. You
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: still have to give them a cut of your proceeds
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: from the sale of maple syrup. So like they set
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: the prices, they can make the price artificially high low
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: depending on what they want to do. And this is
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: not to say like this is just all bad. They
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: have done a lot of good for maple syrup producers
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: across Quebec. But they're apparently also extremely aggressive in enforcing
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: their rules.
• 37:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's the deal. Here in the United States,
• 37:36
  Speaker 2: if you want to talk about the top producers, look
• 37:39
  Speaker 2: no further than Vermont. Vermont very well known for their
• 37:41
  Speaker 2: maple syrup, and New York State is after that, and
• 37:45
  Speaker 2: then you know other New England states. But you also
• 37:47
  Speaker 2: got to throw in, oddly, maybe not oddly, Virginia, Wisconsin, Ohio,
• 37:52
  Speaker 2: and Minnesota as other decent sized producers. But it's really
• 37:56
  Speaker 2: the name of the game, and the US is Vermont.
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: Vermont, the old VAT and I say we take a break,
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: but first we cannot not mention the ppaq's strategic reserves
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: and not mentioned the great maple Syrup Heist of twenty
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: eleven to twenty twelve. Yeah, take it away, Oh okay, Well, apparently,
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: starting in twenty eleven, a group of thieves slowly tapped
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: off twenty seven hundred tons of maple syrup from barrels
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: inside one of the PPAQ strategic warehouses. And nobody caught
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: this for months because they either filled the barrels with
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: water or they left them empty, but either way, the
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: barrels were in place, so anybody walking through the warehouse
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: would not think anything was amiss. And it wasn't until
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: an audit that it was found. And I think out
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: of twenty seven also, this whole I think the whole
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: thing was like thirteen million dollars worth of maple syrup
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: that was stolen, and they only got back four hundred
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: and fifty of the twenty seven hundred tons, and even
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: that they were like, we got to destroy this because
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: it's basically been through the Ringer, you know, stolen and
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: recovered and all that, and several people went to prison.
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: One of them I think his name is Richard Valliers.
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: He was sentenced to seven years and ten months filed
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: US for this heist. That's how serious Quebec takes its
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: maple syrup.
• 39:19
  Speaker 2: All right, we'll take that second break and we'll finish
• 39:22
  Speaker 2: up right after this. All right, we're back, and let's
• 39:52
  Speaker 2: talk about other parts of the world, because we mentioned
• 39:54
  Speaker 2: Europe produces some maple syrup, and you know it happens
• 39:58
  Speaker 2: here and there. They you don't have like the big
• 40:01
  Speaker 2: swings between day and night that you really need to
• 40:04
  Speaker 2: cause the sap to run super well. So a lot
• 40:06
  Speaker 2: of times they'll work with other trees. Birch trees can
• 40:09
  Speaker 2: produce a sap. Other kinds of maple trees I mentioned
• 40:13
  Speaker 2: can produce sap. You're probably not going to make that
• 40:16
  Speaker 2: into maple syrup. You're probably using it for making like
• 40:19
  Speaker 2: you know, like an additive, like making beer, making vinegar,
• 40:23
  Speaker 2: maybe as something in a drink. I know, there's a
• 40:26
  Speaker 2: pretty rich tradition in South Korea of their native maple tree,
• 40:30
  Speaker 2: the goroso tree, where they I mean this sounds dangerous
• 40:34
  Speaker 2: to me. They get together in a hot room and
• 40:38
  Speaker 2: drink like five gallons each of this stuff.
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah each, That sounds.
• 40:43
  Speaker 2: Like like I thought that amount of intake of liquid
• 40:46
  Speaker 2: would kill you.
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: Well, essentially, it's supposed to do the opposite that. It's
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: like a health tonic essentially, and then the sauna action
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: you're sweating out toxins and you're replacing it with this
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: healthful sap. But I mean, if they've been doing it
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: for this long and people aren't over at the very least,
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: it's not harmful.
• 41:03
  Speaker 2: I just wonder how many how long that is, like
• 41:06
  Speaker 2: over five gallon time.
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: I don't know, five gallons of anything.
• 41:10
  Speaker 2: Say like five gallons of water will kill you on it.
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think you can toxify.
• 41:15
  Speaker 2: Really, but yeah, they've been doing it for a long time.
• 41:19
  Speaker 2: Northern China also drinks the sap of certain kinds of
• 41:21
  Speaker 2: maple trees. But you know, outside of Europe, there are
• 41:25
  Speaker 2: places in the United States, like the Pacific Northwest, where
• 41:28
  Speaker 2: they're tapping big leaf maples. The thing is, you just
• 41:32
  Speaker 2: need a lot more about twice as much actually to
• 41:33
  Speaker 2: get a gallon of syrup because it's just not as sugary, right,
• 41:38
  Speaker 2: And here's the other thing too, that not only do
• 41:39
  Speaker 2: they need a lot more to produce the syrup, but
• 41:43
  Speaker 2: it doesn't have that same kind of climate consistency as
• 41:46
  Speaker 2: far as like freezing every night and getting warm the
• 41:48
  Speaker 2: next day. So it's sort of between November and March.
• 41:52
  Speaker 2: It seems like, and maybe if you're someone out there
• 41:54
  Speaker 2: doing this, you can correct me, but it seems like
• 41:56
  Speaker 2: it's tap as available sort of.
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: So you've got a bunch of syrup on your hands.
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: You followed all of the processing tips that we gave
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: you time, was that your maple syrup would be assigned
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: a grade one of three grades fancy, A or B.
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: Fancy was like the most delicate, Bee's the most robust.
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: But people didn't understand that. They thought fancy was the
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: best place, like cats up. Right, you think cats up
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: is much better than catchup because it's fancy. That's not
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: the case. So they changed it. Now it's all grade A.
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: But then they assign different categories based on the flavor
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: and the color of it.
• 42:38
  Speaker 2: That's right. They have golden, amber, dark, and very dark,
• 42:41
  Speaker 2: and that ranges respectively as delicate, rich, robust, and strong. Yeah,
• 42:48
  Speaker 2: the very dark the strongest one you're probably going to
• 42:50
  Speaker 2: be cooking with that the lightest, that golden delicate one,
• 42:55
  Speaker 2: maybe putting it in a cocktail or something like the
• 42:58
  Speaker 2: stuff that you've off the grocery store shelf or get ordered,
• 43:01
  Speaker 2: I guess to be delivered to live on your home
• 43:04
  Speaker 2: shell forever for your pancakes and waffles. That's gonna be
• 43:08
  Speaker 2: that amber maple syrup, right.
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: And then there's other stuff too, like say you didn't
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: get the sugar sand out and it's cloudy, or it
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: has a slightly off taste, like maybe you sugared a
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: little too late in the season. That's graded. It's not
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: an A grade, and they don't sell it in the stores. Instead,
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: it's graded as maple syrup for processing. And so if
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: you have like a maple taste in some industrially produced,
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: commercially available food, it's that kind of maple syrup. So
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: if you've ever had waffle crisp cereal in the nineties,
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: you were eating maple syrup for processing.
• 43:44
  Speaker 2: That's right. I did mention the refrigerator. If you don't
• 43:50
  Speaker 2: open it, you can keep it on that shelf for
• 43:52
  Speaker 2: about three years, but afterward you apparently do need to
• 43:55
  Speaker 2: refrigerate it. And it can go for another three years.
• 43:58
  Speaker 2: It's that high sugar content basically that's keeping it nice
• 44:01
  Speaker 2: in pristine. But you know, as happened to me, once
• 44:04
  Speaker 2: you open that stuff, it can get little mold spores.
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I gotta go check mine, because I really don't
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: think it's molded. But let's say that you want something
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: besides syrup. You're just so syruped out, you drank five
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: gallons of it, and you want something other than the syrup.
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: What are you going to turn to? Chuck?
• 44:22
  Speaker 2: Well, I know everyone's seen those little maple leaf shaped
• 44:25
  Speaker 2: candies a door at a rest stop in New England
• 44:30
  Speaker 2: and I'm sure all over Canada. But yeah, they're usually
• 44:33
  Speaker 2: shaped like little maple leaves. They heat that stuff up
• 44:35
  Speaker 2: and pour it into molds to cool down. It can
• 44:38
  Speaker 2: be like a softer, light colored thing, depending on how
• 44:41
  Speaker 2: hot you get it, or that dark, hard candy. And
• 44:44
  Speaker 2: I've had those. Those are delicious.
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah. There's also maple cream, which is essentially whipped maple syrup.
• 44:50
  Speaker 2: Oh baby.
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And there's something called sugar on snow, which where
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: you take a pack of snow packed together, which is
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: why they call it a pack, and you pour boiling
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: syrup onto it and it immediately congeals into like a
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: caramel consistency, and you basically eat it like a candy.
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: Sometimes they put it on like a popsicle or a
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: sucker stick.
• 45:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that sounds pretty good. We got to mention to
• 45:15
  Speaker 2: all our New England friends. I don't know if they
• 45:18
  Speaker 2: have these in Canada, but the maple creamy is like
• 45:21
  Speaker 2: a saucer of ice cream. And of course at any
• 45:24
  Speaker 2: local county fair you're gonna get your maple cotton candy
• 45:27
  Speaker 2: or a Quebec specialty, the delicious maple syrup pie.
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: I'm going to try that when we're in Montreal for sure,
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: me too. I'm also going to try to find some
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: maple sugar there too. Apparently when you bake with it,
• 45:41
  Speaker 1: you can substitute I've seen one for one or three
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: quarters for one with white granulated sugar in your recipe,
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: and especially if you're making something fall like like a
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: banana bread or apple pie or something like that, it
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: apparently just steps up the flavor quite a bit.
• 45:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Oh, and I know last year I mentioned my
• 46:02
  Speaker 2: maple old fashioned, which is now my kind of go
• 46:05
  Speaker 2: to sweetener for my old fashions. It's really yummy.
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: Well you should try some maple sugar.
• 46:10
  Speaker 2: In there, man, instead of the syrup.
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: No, I mean you make the syrup with sugar, right.
• 46:17
  Speaker 2: Oh no, I just put syrup in there.
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: But what do you make the syrup from? Is what
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: I'm saying.
• 46:22
  Speaker 2: From the bottle off the shelf at publics.
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: Oh, I thought you made your own. We gave people
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: like a whole recipe, didn't we.
• 46:28
  Speaker 2: No? No, no, no, that was a That was a
• 46:30
  Speaker 2: pumpkin spice.
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you should use maple sugar in that then.
• 46:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, good call. But I use maple syrup right
• 46:39
  Speaker 2: out of the bottle for my other favorite old fashion
• 46:43
  Speaker 2: very nice that public.
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: So you don't order it, no, just go to the
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: store get it like a sucker. So you mentioned that
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: it actually has some nutritional value, right, Yeah? I saw
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: that it has ninety five percent of your daily value
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: of manganese. Like beat that.
• 46:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, what does manganese do for you? Everything?
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: Thirty seven percent of your daily value of viboflaving, which
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: is a B vitium vitamin. Also has potassium, which is
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: why I said vitium, calcium, zinc loads of antioxidants apparently,
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: and it has a lower glycemic index score than sugar
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: by far, so it spikes your blood sugar much less
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: than sugar does.
• 47:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. And they have evidence that some of
• 47:25
  Speaker 2: the compounds from maple syrup can enhance the effectiveness of antibiotics.
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's in that's maple sera, Which means it's
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: time for listener mail.
• 47:37
  Speaker 2: All right, this is a quick note from Kyle metzker
• 47:42
  Speaker 2: Kyle says, Hey, guys, I was recently listening to the
• 47:44
  Speaker 2: old episode from twenty eighteen on the Concord. Hey, we
• 47:49
  Speaker 2: just mentioned another old episode, so that'll probably pop up
• 47:51
  Speaker 2: on your little Apple player by the way. Nice and
• 47:54
  Speaker 2: my ongoing quest to simultaneously listen to the back catalog
• 47:56
  Speaker 2: as well as new episode. So Kyle, you are sandwiching
• 47:59
  Speaker 2: my friend. That's right way to do it, I think.
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: Nice.
• 48:02
  Speaker 2: He said, Josh, you were continually amazed that the Concord
• 48:06
  Speaker 2: fuel was kerosene. Is that was very primitive or old school,
• 48:09
  Speaker 2: But actually almost all jet fuel was kerosene and has
• 48:12
  Speaker 2: been since its inception. Basically, its two uses are jet
• 48:17
  Speaker 2: fuel and household cooking and lighting fuel. I wanted to
• 48:20
  Speaker 2: keep this in short and sweet guys, I love you too,
• 48:22
  Speaker 2: and love the show.
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: Short and sweet, very appropriate for maple syrup episode. Sew,
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: that's right, that was who metzker Kyle? Hey, Kyle, thanks
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: a lot for that. We appreciate it. No idea that
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: kerosene's been jet fuel forever, so thanks for that. And
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: if you want to be like Kyle and send us
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: an email that I say thanks for that about you
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: can send it off to stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
• 48:54
  Speaker 2: For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
• 48:57
  Speaker 2: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows